Star Trek at 50 #FanFriday 22

Star Trek is 50 this week, so how could I not use it for Fan Friday? Such a wonderful show - let me tell you why I love it.

Star Trek at 50

There is one thing that I have always loved about Star Trek above all else and that is it strives to show a universe where diversity and tolerance are what most of society aim for. In a time when there was racial strife, they put an African American woman on the bridge of the Enterprise, and they have always tackled issues head on.

Sometimes they've managed it well, sometimes terribly awkwardly where we look back and cringe, but at least they tried. This is one science fiction series that tried to show that the status quo was not the ideal.

Now I have been watching Star Trek ever since I can remember. I used to watch it in repeats on BBC2 as a child. It made an impression then, but I didn't become a Trekkie proper until The Next Generation hit our screens.

I was in secondary school at the time and Next Gen was everything I'd been waiting for in a program. A mixed race, gender balanced crew on a brand spanking new Enterprise, NCC 1701 D, going where no one had gone before.

It had everything:

• a great captain in Picard
• the handsome first office Riker
• female characters that actually had stuff to do, including Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi
• Data
• and my OTP - Riker/Troi

I loved it from Encounter at Farpoint all the way through to All Good Things.

At university I ended up the president of the Star Trek society and I am proud to say we were the largest society on campus that wasn't political or religious :). We used to meet every Wednesday in one of the lecture theatres to watch episodes we had acquired from the States via some contacts in one of the local comic shops. Bear in mind, in those days there was no download - this was a VHS tape that had been converted from NTSC to PAL and then copied. We used to watch it on a large TV that we perched on the desk at the front of the lecture theatre.

At the time this was awesome. We used to see eps only a week after they were shown in the States. They were a little fuzzy and vaguely green, but we got to see them!

We also used to have quizzes, which I would most often set from memory and check the answers afterwards. Have to admit, people still couldn't answer a lot of the questions. I was a geek of the first order :).

Then came Deep Space Nine, which was also awesome, until they got bogged down in the whole war with the Dominion. I know that's why lots of people loved it, but I didn't. We were all a bit worried to begin with that a space station would be too static to be interesting, but the colourful new characters and interesting conflicts kept it going.

My favourite characters were 

• Jadzia Dax
• Odo 
• and Dr Julian Bashir.

I also still think season 1 is brilliant even though it's a little awkward in places.

In recent years I have also become a big fan of The Original Series. It has it's problems, as with any show of the era, but it does it's best and it is wonderfully entertaining.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

How exciting is that?

Of course, as it turned out they weren't always exploring strange new worlds, but they did enough to keep us hooked. I'm not sure there isn't a contemporary trope that the show didn't hit.

My husband thought he'd catch me out the other day when we were watching an ep. He started it up and then paused it a few seconds in, looked a me and said: "So which one is it?"

I smiled, looked at the paused shot and said: "It's the one with the horta."

1 point to me :)

Never test a trekkie! The great god Roddenberry looks down from the beyond and smiles on us. ;)

Back when I started watching Trek I was sweet and innocent, these days I'd slash Kirk and Spock in a heartbeat. For those who are unaware, slash is fanfiction where you take two male characters and pair them together romantically. The name comes from where it started (possibly) with Kirk and Spock and was written Kirk/Spock.

My favourite character from TOS, hands down, is Spock, but I have also come to appreciate the dry wit of Dr McCoy.

I could go into why I didn't really gel with Voyager, why I love the original movies, but can't stand the Next Gen ones, why I think Enterprise missed the mark, and how much I love the reboot, but that would take too long :). Let's just say I've seen them all.

I shall leave you with just a few of my favs from over the years:

• Fav Eps - everything to do with the mirror universe: Mirror Mirror (TOS), Crossover (DS9) and The Naked Time  (TOS)/ The Naked Now (TNG) closely followed by The Trouble with Tribbles (TOS).
• Fav Movie - The Wrath of Khan
• Fav Series - The Next Generation
• Fav Captain - Picard
• Fav crew member - Data or Spock - I can't choose :)

Here's to another 50 years.

What are your favourites from Star Trek?